DragonCon 2019 AAR: Jim Butcher Solo Panel

Do I even need to do an intro for this one? It's Jim Butcher

And if you're new here, you're just in time for my new releases: 

Too Secret Service Part 1        Too Secret Service: Part 2   

Too Secret Service: Part 3

Review of Daniel Humphreys Night's Black Agents

So, this is a fun one.

If you don't recall, a while back I reviewed Dan Humphreys first Paxton Locke novel, Fade. It was a fun variant of everything you love about Harry Dresden. Magic used in inventive ways. Much snark. Solid fight scenes. It's all in the review.

And now, we have the sequel, Night's Black Agents.  It came out last year. Though I genuinely waited for book three to be near completion before I reviewed it.

Why? We'll get to that.

Paxton got the crap kicked out of him foiling his mother’s plans.

Even that isn’t enough to keep him in one place. Mother is still on the loose after all, and there’s no telling what that evil witch is up to. With his new partner (don’t call her a sidekick!) Cassie, Paxton heads to Arizona to help an old police friend with a supernatural murder problem.

But Mother isn’t content to lay low now that she’s out of jail. She’s got a brand new coven, and she wants her grimoire back. Now. Nothing will stop her from getting her spellbook back, not even her son. Or the ancient stirring in its sleep in the Valley of the Sun.

Paxton’s faced witches, ghosts, and shadow demons, but can he handle an ancient god? With the lives of two young boys hanging in the balance, he can’t back down.

The book has two arcs. One is a subplot detailing the travails of Mother Dearest after her escape from supermax in the last novel -- as well as the hunt by Humphreys own version of the Monster Control Bureau -- only with a different mission.

Our main plot follows Paxton hot on the trail of a magical murderer. The book opens only a week after the end of Fade. (Even Harry Dresden gets more time to rest.) And it begins with "I was halfway through a stack of pancakes when the dead guy walked in the door." Probably the best opening line since "The building was on fire, but it wasn't my fault." (Yes, I hate to open with comparing it to a line from The Dresden Files, but really, it's one of the few works I can compare it to. One of the lines in the novel is literally "With the exception of magic, the only real talent I had was taking a beating." -- tell me that doesn't sound like Jim Butcher.)

We open with a random encounter ... which will become less random over time. Because this random encounter sees Paxton for what he is, and sees him as a snack.

And this is just the opening.

There are a lot of "oh crap" moments like this scattered throughout my notes. Looking at notes I made on the kindle, many of my comments even at the start of the book are "Oy." "Oh crap," "Aw f***", and "What do you mean she has groupies!?" et al. (By the way, a line for Larry Correia fans: "Forensic accounting, it seemed, was a class of sorcery all its own.")

It's even worse when Mother Dearest turns into Kilgrave from Jessica Jones, only creepier.

And all these comments are from Chapter 1. It just gets better from there.

Of course, Dan has great lines to put a backspin on tropes. As Paxton describes his world: "Sheer moments of terror followed by hours of law enforcement shouting." And there are a bunch of ... re-purposed lines from classic Star Wars (as opposed to EU novel Star Wars, as we all know, there were no other films). And all of the one-liners are fun: "an orphaned teenager with sudden-onset wizard syndrome was a fertile field for the corrupting possibility of power," or even the casual "Buddy, you're about the ninth worst thing I've seen this week."

Now, I really must compliment Dan on making an interesting federal agency to hunt black magic. These are obviously fictional feds, as the characters are colorful, interesting and entertaining. Also, to add to the humor, they're attached to ATF (or BATFE, if you want to be picky).  I guess black magic is a sort of firearm. They have their own R and D section, complete with the sort of mad tinkerers you'd expect to be working in Q's lab.

Hell, to be perfectly honest, while I tend to skip the sections on the villains (which is a mistake I made for the Honor Harrington series... oops) Humphreys manages to make these sections readable and tolerable, but more importantly, relevant to the plot as a whole. This is the point where Humphreys fits in magical mechanics in a way that doesn't make your eyes bleed. Hell, who am I kidding, he actually takes the time and effort to MAKE MAGIC MAKE SENSE. (I'm not naming names, JK). Mother turns into a little bit of a Final Fantasy villain, but it makes more sense in book 3.

Not to mention that the Mother subplot is put to great effect when the villain of the week is enough to make her nervous.

And the feds hunting Mother actually serves to tie the main arc plot very neatly back to the primary plot for the individual novel. Overall, it's a great balance of series arc and book plot.

(If the author is reading this review, I just got to this exchange

"So, what, you think this is the end of the world?"

"Maybe. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Fire and brimstone."

Ahem.... smartass).

And Humphreys does a great job of slow world building. Just casual references to gremlins on satellites, or magical abilities of X or Y person. 

Now here comes the boom.
So, why did I wait so long to review this? Because this ends on a cliffhanger.

Imagine the first time you ever saw The Empire Strikes Back. Now imagine if it stopped with Luke dangling in mid-air in Cloud city, Han is still frozen in carbonite, and the last we saw of the Millennium Falcon, it was being chased by TIE-fighters into the clouds.

That's what the end of this book felt like. My last note on the book is two words, and they are often favored by Samuel L. Jackson.

Don't worry. Book three is around the corner. It's coming out the last weekend in June. So if you haven't read Night's Black Agents yet, you needn't worry, you won't have to wait a year for the awesome conclusion. And yes, I've read the ARC for the novel already, and I have notes for that review as well.

Some days, it's good to be the writer. Free books happen.

Until then, if you haven't yet, you can buy Fade and Night's Black Agents here, and by the time you get to the cliffhanger, book 3 should be out. I'll update this post with the link for book 3 when it drops.

If you have gotten them, then I can also suggest Saint Tommy NYPD, which has also garnered a comparison or two to the Dresden files.

And you can check out the latest Dragon Award discussion right here.

DragonCon 2017: Keeping the Peace: Liaison Characters in UF

Whether striving to improve communication & relations between supernatural & human communities, or between different groups within the supernatural world, our panelists’ characters often find themselves in the position of peacemaker.

Panelists: Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Delilah S. Dawson, Kim Harrison, Nancy Holzner, Faith Hunter.

This is another one I couldn't get into. Because, again, the hall was WWWAAAYYYY too small for Jim Butcher ALONE, nevermind all of the other authors.

And the audio is a little finicky at times. The farther away you get from the camera, the less you can hear people. Even with headphones, you might want to edge the volume higher and higher. That's all.

Speaking of fantasy

Try mine.

DragonCon 2017: Jim Butcher Solo Panel

So, I'm back from DragonCon. I live. BWAHAHAHAAHA

And no, I don't have a Dragon Award. But are we really surprised? More on that on my radio show on Sunday.

But now, the important stuff: Jim Butcher!

Yes, even though the writers track threatened to throw out people who recorded the event, that doesn't stop ANYBODY at DragonCon. Okay, it stopped me, but I didn't feel like putting in the effort, only to have it duplicated by people with better recording devices.

Hell, there are even some panels this year I'll be able to see only BECAUSE people uploaded them to YouTube.

This presentation with Jim Butcher will have very little that's new for long time readers of the blog. However, there are still fun tidbits, including Jim Butcher as Alexander Hamilton, and the story of how he defeated a Witch Doctor's curse, and foiled an extortion racket when he was only ... 12.... ish.

Just enjoy.

For the record, if you enjoyed this, here, have some books while you're waiting for the next Harry Dresden.

Fisking the Six Foot Blivet

So, Brian Niemeier found a new pinata and beat it around with a baseball bat.

Then Al grabbed the bat and beat it around some more.

[Cracks fingers]

My turn.

The blog is "Attack of the Six-Foot Tranny."

Yeah. This is going to be one of those days...

The title is

Horror Puppies Redux: Is Souldancer Really Horror Fandom’s New Favourite Novel?

Yes, as you can tell from the spelling, yes, this is a British Tranny who goes by the name "Doris."

Well, DragonCon has over 60,000 attendees. Voting was open to everybody. So unless you have a better sampling or method of statistical analysis, "Dori," I'm going to have to say yes.

A while back I made a post about how the Sad and Rabid Puppies campaigns have treated horror fiction.

Sigh. Of course you did.

I follow the bouncing link, and I get this.

Honor at Stake is very much what Stephen Jones would call “horror-lite”. It starts out as a vampire romance in the vein of Stephanie Meyer and Charlaine Harris, evolves into a humorous action-driven narrative in the tradition of Joss Whedon and Larry Correia, and ends up with hordes of vampires being dispatched with a consecrated fire hydrant. For all its jokes at the expense of sparkly vampires, the book remains far closer to Twilight than to, say, Salem’s Lot.

So if you follow the bouncing ball for a moment, Honor at Stake evolves into being like Joss and Larry, but is closer to Twilight than to Stephen King....

Just for the record, did anyone else notice that it just demeaned Larry Correia and Joss Whedon as being on par with Twilight?

I'm going to suggest that there are a few million Buffy fans out there who now want your head on a stick, "Doris." In fact, I hope you've transitioned already, otherwise there will be Whedon fans -- not fans of Larry, Whedon -- who will happily help you transition without anesthetic. And no, I'm not one of them. I'm just laughing at the image of the hordes of Joss fans carrying torches and pitchfolks.

The next comment about me is to cite a tweet.

Declan Finn replies that Brian Niemeier is his only competition in the category.

All of this strikes me as rather rude conduct. They hail the Dragon Awards as the true voice of fandom, and then dismiss four of the six horror nominees as undeserving of consideration. What could I infer from this behaviour, except that these people feel contempt for horror fans?

Hey, "Doris," you stupid git, maybe you should have read the blog post I made TWO WEEKS BEFORE THAT (and nearly THREE weeks before the hir statements) where I said that I DIDN'T KNOW ANY OF THE OTHER AUTHORS.  I didn't even know that they existed. 

Kinda hard for me to respect people who I don't even know exist, git. Perhaps you should do something strange, "Doris," and instead of stopping when you get your evidence for the narrative, you stop when there's nothing else to research. The way actual researchers do.

I'd thank "Doris" for reading my book, but I suspect I know which review s/he wrote.

Anyway, back to the original stupidity that started this mess.

I pointed out that when the pro-Puppy authors write something within the horror spectrum, they generally end up with the kind of work that editor and horror expert Stephen Jones associates with the term “horror-lite”

S/he goes on to diss urban fantasy....

Today we are living in a world that is ‘horror-lite’. This appalling appellation was coined by publishers to describe the type of fiction that is currently enjoying massive success under such genre categories as ‘paranormal romance’, ‘urban fantasy’, ‘literary mash-up’ or even ‘steampunk’. 

Okay, congrats, "Doris," you now have dissed urban fantasy.

You now have Jim Butcher's fans on your ass, and in a way that you will not enjoy, unless you like the idea of being beaten with hockey sticks and carved wizard's staffs. I suspect that's a fetish not even the internet likes that much.

For the record, you buggered swine, I was shooting for fantasy or paranormal. I hadn't really thought of my work as horror. In fact, again, HAD YOU DONE YOUR RESEARCH, you would have noted that I suggested Honor at Stake for military, YA, and best fantasy, with a question mark around horror.

But, no, "Doris," your transition must be transitioning from a male to the IQ of mayo.

...Am I being insulting? Well, hey, s/he said I'm insulting. S/he wants me to be insulting. I can do insulting.

S/he then goes on to cite, once again, a twitter conversation as PROOF that I'm insulting and dismissive of the horror genre.

Again, I was shooting for urban fantasy. My readers disagreed. Get over it, Boris.

Since then, Souldancer succeeded in winning the Dragon Award for horror, and the Puppysphere seems to be making a concerted effort to present Brian Niemeier as being the contemporary horror author

That's .... news to me. Boring here doesn't put any links in to cite as evidence, but right now, s/he can link to a list of websites, and I wouldn't trust it until I went through each link to see if they were even Puppy related.

(with honourable mention sometimes being given to Declan Finn).

How nice. Also news to me. Also without links or any other supporting evidence to back it up.

Around Halloween, the Castalia House blog ran a post called “SUPERVERSIVE and Horror Stories” in which Josh Young argues for the superiority of horror films with clear-cut heroes (such as Alien and The Evil Dead) over those which focus on college students being chopped up (such as Friday the 13th).

And somehow, Boris doesn't have anything to bitch about in that concept ... yet, anyway, I'm fisking as I go along.

Towards the end, he makes an abrupt change of subject from heroic horror films to heroic horror literature:

Abrupt? You realize that it's a Publisher blog, right? That they publish books? How did you NOT expect it to go to books?

but does he mention Robert E. Howard, whose sword-and-sorcery protagonists regularly faced Lovecraftian abominations? Does he acknowledge the writers who have shaped the occult detective genre, from H. and E. Heron through to Jim Butcher?

I find it interesting that Boring forgot in the previous blog that he's dismissed and disparaged urban fantasy, and he wants to kowtow to Butcher? Too late.

Does he namecheck anyone from the legion of authors, from Bram Stoker onwards, who have thrilled readers with tales of cross-wielding vampire hunters?

Nope, nope, and nope. It is Brian Niemeier who has the distinction of being the only writer mentioned in Young’s survey of horror.

No, of course he doesn't. You know why? Because if Boris here had read THE TITLE OF THE PIECE (which s/he did, it's cited three excerpts ago) it was "SUPERVERSIVE and Horror Stories." The term Superversive is not exactly in widespread use. Come to think of it, Brian is the only horror novelist I know who uses the term -- as evidenced by hanging out in the Superversive roundtable radio show.  Not even Butcher uses it.

I use it, but that's only if you count me as a horror novelist. Which I don't, but I'll take nominations in whatever genre I can get.

Now, the Dragon Awards claim to honour “the works that are genuinely most beloved by the core audience”, and this is a description that the Puppies have taken as gospel truth. 

And I'm sure that you believe that the Hugos really are the most prestigious SFF award, right, Boring?

But the obscure, self-published Souldancer is not beloved amongst horror fans. Evidence of this can be gleaned simply by registering at the horror forum of your choice and asking the members if they have ever heard of Brian Niemeier. Indeed, a search through Google (or Amazon, or Goodreads, or Twitter, or Reddit) will indicate that Souldancer has made almost no impact outside of Puppy circles.

That's it? That's the best shot at Souldancer? That he can't find it on Google. You know, even Ann Coulter uses Lexus/Nexus, and says what search terms she uses.

And internet Forums? Funny, I always heard that internet forums were a wretched hive of scum and villainy. That this creature relies on them only makes me feel more certain.

When I google Souldancer, the first thing I get is Brian's Amazon page. Then a bunch of companies that used the phrase. Next time I see Brian, I get the Goodreads page for Souldancer, with a 4.1 rating.

What happens when I Google "Doris V Sutherland" ... okay, fine. The Twitter page. File 770 (I'm shocked), the blog I'm fisking....the about page of the blog....

"A Troubled Dark Soul. A Tale of Doris V. Sutherland."

Oh... Oh Dear.

"Doris," I don't think you want to go to "What people can find on the Internet" for your argument. I really don't think you want to do that.

This is a point I made when I reported on the Dragon Awards at WWAC:

Yes, we have a link ... to something that Boris has written. Because citing evidence just boils down to footnoting your own opinion.

And WWAC is "Women Writing About Comics." Uh huh.

The link only boiled down to Dormamu here bitching that Souldancer only had 8 reviews at the time it won the Dragon.

Brian actually replied.

Boris characterized Brian's reply as

Niemeier then went on to claim that Souldancer outsold N. K. Jemisin’s  The Fifth Season, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel earlier this year:

Um ..... read it again. He MOVED MORE COPIES. This is in case this twit has trouble reading.

In fact, this twit has trouble reading A PHOTO S/HE HIGHLIGHTED

"Doris" thrashes around on the false premise for a while...false premise ... .. blah blah ... false premise ... false premise .... dares Brian to get more reviews ... Brian gets more reviews.... "Doris" dismisses reviews....

Okay, moving out of "reviews uber alles."

Nevertheless, the Puppies – or, more specifically, Niemeier and his immediate circle of friends – kept up the charade that the little-known Souldancer was the most popular horror novel published within the Dragons’ twelve-month eligibility period.

It got more votes at a Convention that boasts 60,000 members a year....

With voting open to everyone....

Free of charge ....

So, I gotta ask, how many friends do you think Brian has?

Niemeier’s blog post received replies comparing me variously to a spoilt child, a high school mean girl and a wiggling worm for venturing to suggest otherwise.

 If the size-15 shoe fits...

My personal favourite comment came from Niemeier himself; apparently channelling his inner Benjanun Sriduangkaew,

Benja-whatnow?

he felt it appropriate to threaten me with physical violence

And you somehow feel threatened, Lurch?

It’s not the easily excitable guys whose anger you should worry about. It’s the patient, reserved guys quietly sipping their drinks and reading Heinlein novels until they decide they’ve had enough of the loudmouths making a scene, take you out in the parking lot, and bust out your teeth.

Pardon me while I head desk for a bit.

Ahem...

"Doris." Bubbie. My extra-large jellyfish, my special snow flake, and other invertebrates .... it's a metaphor.

You know what a metaphor is, right?

Hell, this was an observation made by Isaac Asimov in the very first Black Widowers short story. Perhaps you heard it as "beware the wraith of a patient man"? No? Learn to read. 

One of Niemeier’s friends, a blogger named Alfred Genesson, made a post of his own attacking me. Here is his reply to my comment about Souldancer‘s lack of reviews online:

Oh, come on, now you're going after Al? Really? Dora the Tora cites an Injustice Gamer post.

Maybe some of us realize how active your type is at disemployment. Maybe we were busy reading books. At any rate, it’s not your crappy pastiche of urban fantasy, faerie tales, and WoD fanfic that you love.

And that's an attack?

Genesson starts his three-pronged rebuttal by suggesting, bizarrely, that people who give positive reviews to Souldancer are in danger of losing their jobs. He seems to expect us to believe that the legions of Souldancer fans have gathered into some kind of Fight Club-like underground subculture that dare not speak its name.

Bizarre?

The Wrights were uninvited from Cons they've gone to for years. 

Lou Antonelli had one of his short stories un-approved after he was told it was going to be published.

Alfred has other examples in his own dissection.

I await the part where this becomes "bizarre."

He then suggests that fans are too busy reading books to leave reviews, 

Alfred makes an effort to get reviews in, and sometimes the best he can do is a mini-review. I read more than 50 books a year, and I've only reviewed 57 books on Amazon in 6 years (2011-2016). And many of those are to books I either really, really loved, or books I desperately hated.

an argument which ignores the basic fact that fandom is built upon discussing media as well as consuming it:

Yes. Because we all know that all readers are obsessive fanboys who must do nothing but jabber about what they're reading online. There are no readers who are introverts, or people who would rather read than chat ....

Oh wait, what sounds like the very definition of a bookworm.

Seriously, what dungeon does this troll reside in?

a work that is not being discussed clearly has no fandom.

I haven't seen one discussion online about Honor at Stake, which has 53 reviews as of this moment. Is that a discussion because I have reviews, or do I not have a fan base because I have never been discussed on an internet forum, to my knowledge?

If you want to go by reviews, than Honor at Stake is better than Souldancer, five of Vox Day's books, six of John C Wright's books, and over 7 Timothy Zahn novels.

If you wish to make that assertion, please do so in front of their fans. I would love to see that reply. I'll view it from a safe distance.

But most interesting of all is his third assertion: that I prefer “crappy pastiche of urban fantasy, faerie tales, and World of Darkness fanfic”.

I don't even know what World of Darkness is, so, next.

This irrelevant ad hominem 

An ad hominem is a personal attack. It means "against the man."

.... And that joke is so easy in this case, "Doris," that I'm going to just let someone else fill in that particular blank.

(I was talking about whether a book is popular, rather than whether I personally like it)

Again, go argue with the 60,000 DragonCon attendees, and tell them how what they vote on isn't popular. Go ahead. Me and every statistician ever will sit back and laugh at you.

seems to be a response to my earlier comment that the Sad Puppies have shown little interest in horror fiction.

Alfred is a Rabid Puppy. Learn the difference between Puppies before you decide to kick them.

I would be a Rabid Puppy, but that would require that I care about the Hugos. At best, I'm just a troublemaking Puppy who will sit back and laugh as you make unforced errors throughout the process.

Genesson is trying to give the impression that he and the other Puppy supporters are actually hardened fans of the horror genre; 

I'm not.

Alfred isn't.

I'm trying to figure out if "Doris" is genuinely confused, or just a lying blivet.

but as he has no evidence to back up this claim,

He doesn't make this claim. In fact, he says exactly the opposite. I know you're British, but American English isn't that incomprehensible, is it?

he settles for simply impugning my own tastes.

 Puppies have been impugning the tastes of Puppy Kickers for years. This is new?

He has no idea where my tastes lie, of course, and so makes a wild stab-in-the-dark involving urban fantasy pastiche and World of Darkness fanfics

Stab-in-the-dark .... Is it really that hard? Might they include, I don't know ... something dark and depressing, where everyone dies?

You know, like George Martin?

(a description that, amusingly enough, is not too far from Declan Finn’s Puppy-approved Honor at Stake).

World of Darkness?  I say again ... what's that?

Alfred gives me a hint.

I don't recall a hate for Christianity being anywhere in his novels, nor an annoying and stupid clan warfare bit with drug and sex addled lower classes.  His vampires follow theological rules and are individuals, subject to a singular council, not part of WoD clan structures. Again, try harder.  

Wow.  WoD is anti-Christian, vampire clan warfare, drug abuse, sex addled, and class warfare?

"Doris"? If Alfred is even slightly accurate, you are apparently illiterate. In fact, I'd have to guess that you've dictated the entire blog post to someone who can tolerate listening to you.

Behind all of the bluster, Genesson’s post marks an attempt to frame the Puppies as the true custodians of horror fiction

Yes, yes, we know you want that job, "Doris."

I know that Doofus here likes to consider horror hir genre, hence the harping, but not only has Alfred said he's not the expert on all things horror, s/he/it has apparently not noticed that Puppies don't want to be custodians. We don't want to tell people what to read. All Puppies want people to read what they enjoy, and that's it, thank you.

The Puppy Kickers want to be the custodians. They are, after all, the "TruFans," the "Real Fans." They're pure fans. A master fandom, if you will.

with Brian Niemeier and (presumably) Declan Finn being the toasts of horror fandom. 

BWAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHA

Yeah. Sure.

As for those horror fans who do not read Niemeier or Finn, well, they are merely consumers of urban fantasy and other forms of horror-lite. As I have already shown, this is a complete reversal of the truth.

Actually, "Doris," you lying blivet, you're the only person who have used the phrase "horror-lite."

Niemeier himself has stated that his book won its Dragon Award due to voters who wanted to show their contempt for the Hugos.

Rabid Puppies voted as well. Vox Day voted for Brian Niemeier, and said "Sorry Declan." I presume a lot of Vox's fans followed.

If so, this is further evidence of a lack of votes from horror fans, who in my experience do not generally keep up with the Hugo Awards.

Because there is no overlap with scifi readers and horror writers? Horror writers are monomaniacs who cannot read anything else?

Again, "Doris," links. Stats. Proof. Evidence. Not whatever gets whispered in the echoes of your mind.

A number of my friends are indie horror writers,

And I'm sure that some of your best friends are conservatives, right?

and they pay little attention to the Hugos:

Well, Stephen King paid enough attention to the Hugos to declare that he didn't want to play with them. Are your indie writers less attentive and aware than King? Really?

they seem to view the award as being purely for science fiction,

Then why would King ever look at it in the first place?

Because, you know, his fans asked him.

I guess "Doris" isn't a real fan of horror, wouldn't s/he be aware of that? Come on, even I know that, and I'm not that big a fan of horror. Maybe "Doris" should get hir horror credentials renewed. Heh.

and consequently not their territory as writers or readers (by the same token, I’d imagine that the SF community generally does not look at the Bram Stoker Awards too closely).

I don't see why not. I mean, the Stoker awards have nominated or gone to mysteries like A Boy's Life, thrillers like Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, a fantasy like American Gods (which, oh, by the way, WON A HUGO).

... So maybe you should at least do a quick Wiki search? Like I just did?

Though, come to think of it, "attack of the 6 foot Tranny" does describe Buffalo Bill....

And if you are not paying attention to the Hugos, then you are unlikely to be aware of the Sad Puppies. I have sometimes mentioned the campaign to my friends in horror fandom, and none of them had heard of it.

You know, when Richard Nixon swept the election, nearly getting all 50 states, a New York Times reporter was confused, because, after all, no one she knew voted for him.

And no one "Doris" knows is aware of Puppies.

I guess no one "Doris" the Doofus knows has ever read Entertainment Weekly. Or Wired. Or File 770. Or NPR. Or the Atlantic. The Boston Globe. National Review. And this is just the first two pages of results upon googling Sad Puppies.

The notion that legions of horror fans (who care little about the Hugos) have suddenly become card-carrying supporters of the Puppy campaigns (which care little about horror) is simply not something that I can swallow.

..... Words cannot begin to describe how much I don't want to know what you will swallow, "Doris."

If you want to argue that Souldancer is a good novel, then go ahead. 

Funny, I thought that was part of winning the Dragon Award. The novel was so good, Brian's fans actually showed up and voted for it. You didn't vote. Therefore, you don't count in the Dragon Award.

If you want to argue that it deserves to be popular, and may someday be popular, then go ahead.

It already is. It was fans who got him a Dragon Award. At a convention with 60,000 con goers, minimum.

But you cannot argue, with any kind of intellectual honesty, that it is currently a popular novel amongst fans of the genre.

Actually, I can. It's popular enough to win a Dragon Award. I'll see my 60,000 con goers against your poor attempts at Googling any day of the week.

And you haven't proved otherwise, Doofus.

This claim will never escape Niemeier’s echo chamber: go around saying that Souldancer is horror fandom’s new favourite novel, and the first people to call you out will be horror fans.

Actually, the only one who seems to be calling him out is this bugger.

Incidentally, when I first reported on the Dragon Awards at WWAC, I received a reply from one of the non-Puppy nominees where she mentioned her “obscure indie published military sci fi book”. She has the right idea. She sees that there is no shame in being a little-league writer who does what they enjoy, who picks up a few fans along the way, and who may someday go on to bigger things.

There isn't...

...What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?

Brian Niemeier does not seem to realise this. For him, it is clearly not enough to have a small but loyal readership that has pushed him to the top of an online poll. He has to present himself as being fandom’s favourite horror writer – the “Dragon of Horror”, as he styles himself – even though he knows full well that this is simply not the truth.

It's called marketing. Only instead of "attack of the 6 ft tranny," he's marketing as the first guy to win the Dragon.

It's called a brand. It's how the free market works.

Perhaps you should look into that sometime.

"Doris" ends with a quote.

But if you’re an asshat, you will not be tolerated. Don’t be a dick. Because if you are, you’re going to get called out real quick.

Yeah. Sure. Except obviously, no one has called you out, douchy stalker boy. Now go take your size 20 stilleto heels, and go walk on a grate....

Watch as "Doris" takes that as a threat, too.

If the “Dragon of Horror” keeps things up, then this is a lesson he will soon learn the hard way.

Oh, look, stalkerish threats. Thankfully, s/he/it is far across the see, and is too cheap to pay for air fare. Though if this creature would like to stalk me ... well, I live near a police station, my neighborhood has clear lines of sight, and I'm relatively certain I can see this one coming.

And now, if you haven't already, you might want to try one of the nominated Best Horror novels for the Dragon last year, Honor at Stake, it's sequel Murphy's Law of Vampires, or perhaps one of the other books.

And if you've read them, a review would be nice.

 

DragonCon Report 2016: Jim Butcher

Yes. that is Jim Butcher wearing Captain America scale mail armor. It also comes with a chain mail cowl.

Jim Butcher is deeply enamored with DragonCon. After multiple signings where no one showed up, or panels at conventions where he was the only one in the room, DragonCon is where he started to feel like an author. In fact, his first panel was in the basement of the Hyatt, and while he was certain no one would show up, he was also determined to at least be there on time. He was stymied by the horde of people in the hallway, blocking his path. He figured that he was going to be late for his own panel.

Then everyone started looking at him. "What, do I have something on my face?"

"You're Jim Butcher!"

"Yes.... do I owe you money?"

"We all came here to see you!"

And that's when Butcher started to feel like a real writer.

One of the first questions at the Q&A session was asking Butcher about a crossover among his various and sundry universes. Butcher declared that it would have to be a multiple universe threat, and Tavi (of Alera) would have to be the mastermind and grand strategist in all of that ... mostly because "Harry doesn't plan."

Question: Do you consciously make Harry choose the worst possible option every time.

Butcher: Not really. In Changes, I had no idea which route I was going to take. When he was injured, he could have gone one of three ways. He could to to Mab, which he did. He could have taken up Lasciel's coin again. Or even worse, he could have used Kemmler's Dark Hollow. So Harry doesn't always pick the worst possible choice. Mab's the monster he knew.

Applause broke out. Butcher: "No, no, don't clap, I'm awkward and self conscious enough."

When asked about playing the Dresden RPG, Butcher said, "No, I cannot play the RPG. Imagine being my GM. If I do it, it's too much like work. If I play it, I'd just have to rewrite it the way I would have had it happen. As for the guys who make the game, I just answer questions about the books. That turns into more questions. Which become I gotta stop them before they reach the right conclusions!"

Someone asked about the material for the Grey Warden cloaks. "Whatever they use to make the cloaks from Rivendell. It's probably wool. Wool swirls dramatically, which is really important for a Grey Warden."

Instead of making Harry go the way the story needs to go, Butcher finds that "I just give Harry the motivation to go in the right direction so that he doesn't go off track. If he does, I have to go back and make sure he has the information to make the right decision."

When asked about fighting in his books, Butcher merely answered, "My Dad's a Ranger. And I listen to guys who have been there."

When asked about future projects in the Dresdenverse, Butcher said, "Children and dogs steal everything, if you make them interesting. I am one novel away from releasing my next book of anthologies. It should take a month for me to finish. It'll be Harry's first day as a dad from Mouse's point of view. Why? Because Mouse is the most emotionally balanced person in Harry's world."

Other than that? Harry's daughter Maggie might end up with her own series of YA novels, a sort of Dresden Hogwarts. The premise is simple, "What if there really are monsters under the bed that we forget about when we grow up? And they're all at this school, and the kids have to fight them?"  It will be loosely based off of the experience of Butcher's sister ... mostly her six kids who all go to Catholic school.  Basically, this place would be a boarding school, where Maggie would spend summer with her dad, and be "away at school, where they think it's safer." As Maggie suffers from a lot of social anxieties, "Mouse would act as her service dog. Though Maggie is perfectly fine when everything's on fire and people are screaming. It's her superpower."

Heh. No need for a paternity test, Harry is definitely the father.

When asked about a frozen turkey falling out of the sky, destroying a car, and going "Ding!" Butcher states that he stole it from Looney Tunes, and he had been operating on no sleep when that happened.

Oh yes, apparently, Lucifer himself is going to make an appearance at the end of the series, the "apocalyptic trilogy" at the end.

When someone asked "Did you know there's a Pharisee named Nicodemus?" Butcher said, "No? Really? Come one, I've memorized whole books of the bible. But did I put a biblical character in there? I will not confirm or deny."

While Butcher has the major character arcs and story mapped out, he does not have minor side characters planned out in advance. Butters was supposed to be a throwaway character, because Jim needed some levity during a grim autopsy scene. When it came to Dead Beat, Dresdent needed the sidekick du jour, and that person had to be "tactically useless." Butters for the win. Afterwards, Butcher realized, "Wow, this little guy is a hero. I either gotta kill him or let him grow up." At which point, Butcher started planning where Butters would go.

As mentioned the other day, Peace Talks is behind because he's between houses for the first time in his life, and he has no space to work, and he has no dog. His last dog died, and "he was the brains of the operation."  He currently has cats. And "Cats are Tony Stark. All of them." His significant other, Kitty, and he agreed to get one cat, and they now have three. One of which is a little Tuxedo Cat named Zatanna.

Next question: would we ever see the kid from the first short story ever again?

"She will absolutely not walk in as the femme fatale at the start of the final trilogy. That will not happen. Really."

On James Marsters doing the audio books, "They asked me 'Hey, you want Spike from Buffy for your books?' I did a happy dance all around the house, came back to them and said, 'Its okay.' And he must like doing them too, he's one of the highest paid actors on television. It's not like he needs the money."

Q: "If Harry came to DragonCon, which hotel would he blow up."
JB: "Which wouldn't? But I can't tell you that because it's a spoiler for the final trilogy."

Q: "Now that Harry is in the Winter Court, along with Kris Kringle, is there any possibility that we'll have Harry Saves Christmas?"
JB: "You mean like a short story? I don't like doing short stories. Every time I write one, I say it's going to be the last short story I ever do ... and if I did Harry Saves Christmas, it would be the last short story I ever do."

On Cinder Spires

On creating cat culture: "They're like little libertarians. They're even pissed off when they find that human's feed their kits. What are the humans teaching them by doing that! No. Shouldn't happen." And, since he has cats in his books, his cats are a write off. He is serious about that, "or the IRS gets all question-y."

Yes, in case you were wondering, Jim has been influenced by Horatio Hornblower, Captain Aubrey, and Honor Harrington -- that's why it has wooden ships, sky pirates and a civilization of talking cats.

One of his few complaints about the cover art is, after all the times that the artist puts a hat on Dresden's head, even though he's never worn one, the Captain of Cinder Spires wears a hat in the book, and there wasn't one on the cover! "At least have him holding a hat!"

"Unlike my other series, I made this one on purpose. I had made Dresden to spite my creative writing teacher. I followed all of her advice to show her it wouldn't work. I showed her!  And Alera was made on a bet, that I couldn't take two overused ideas and make them work -- in this case, Lost Roman Legion and Pokemon. With Cinder Spires, It came from a moment of inspiration, which is odd for me. I was driving home from an RPG, and I saw a cloud like a ship in the middle of a lightning storm. Wouldn't it be awesome to have two air ships duking it out in the middle of a storm like this? And I had to do the worldbuilding first. Though sometimes I had to build the world under my character's feet. I was basically making the X-men of Steampunk."

DragonCon report 2016, The Secrets of NY Times Bestselling Authors

This one was interesting, mostly for the people on the panel. And by people, I mostly mean Jim Butcher and Kevin J. Anderson.

Mercedes Lackey was also there, but even she wasn't entirely certain why. She was just recently number one on the bestseller list first time in 30 years. She also tried to cite rapist and child molestor Marion Zimmer Bradley, at which point, I tuned out Lackey for the rest of the panel to the best of my ability.

Kevin J. Anderson noted that he has written 140 books and 55 of them were bestsellers. He was actually denied the number one slot for Star Wars: Dark Apprentice, even though it sold THREE TIMES more books than the next best seller down the list, because, after all, one can't have Star Wars as Number one on the NYTimes Bestseller list, now can we? Schmucks.

Anyway....

When asked about what they hate the most, KJA said, "I had when I order a beer first, but someone else is served .... in writing? I hate when I'm told that I just got lucky.  Funny that, the harder I work, the luckier I get."

Jim Butcher said, "I hate when I work six to nine months on a book, then someone comes up to me at the signing for that book and asked me when's the next one. Personally, I hate when I autograph pages the whole day, then I go and lift weights, injuring myself. Hate that. Though, speaking of things people hate, I had one scene in Skin Game where I had a love scene between two characters, and it turned out to be a dream. The only reactions I got from my beta readers were gifs of people flipping tables."

Jim went on to discuss his next book, Peace Talks. "People keep asking when it's going to come out. The publisher insists that it should come out only after it's finished." It's been particularly hard for Butcher considering that he's between houses for the first time in his life, and he has no space to work, and he has no dog. His last dog died, and "he was the brains of the operation."  He currently has cats, though. His significant other, Kitty, and he agreed to get one cat, and they now have three. Cats, however, are not really helping his process, since they have no problem sitting on the keyboard and giving him three pages of Ms.

Part of the reason he's between houses has to do with construction on his new house. The contractors are so far behind, that he and Kitty went over to have a talk with them. They had planned out in advance that they would do good cop, bad cop. She would be bad cop, and he would be calm, reassuring, reasonable cop.

Then they got there, and the plan suddenly went to "good cop, insane cop. Which turned out to be just as effective."

While you're waiting for Peace Talks to come out, you might wish to try out my Sad Puppy and Dragon Award Nominated Novel Honor at Stake by clicking this link.

Flashback blog: Setting things on fire

Originally posted last February, this was before I had 6,000 readers a week, so there may be one or two who haven't seen it originally.

[If you've seen this before, well, don't be surprised. I have jury duty today, so my time's a little backed up. Sorry for the rerun, folks.]

The Mad Genius Club is going to force me to actually work. I don't mean they're holding a gun to my head, but they are making me up my game with their most recent posting of their year's topics.

If they're going to up their game, let's see who can out-blog who. Ha!

… Which, sadly, makes me think “Who ha's? Didn't Sarah Hoyt talk about this once?”

If you'd been to Cedar's blog last week, you've already read this one. If you haven't ... why haven't you?

Anyway...

If you're interested in pacing an entire series, you could do much worse than look at the fantasy novels of Terry Goodkind. In his case, the solution to one, world-ending doom leads to the next world ending doom. I did that in one series, the Pius trilogy, where book one ends nice and happy and yay the bad guys are gone … then that lead into book two, where the bad guys had a backup plan, which led into causing problems in what would be book three.

But for pacing an individual novel, the short version is, I like putting pressure on my characters. I have to, otherwise I don't get the best out of them. After all, these are thrillers. Even when I'm going through character moments, the moments have to keep the tension on – on the protagonist or on the reader. It is perfectly and completely fair to have a long conversation about love and emotions, and politics and economics. It can go on for as long as you like … though the reader might find it more interesting if there's a bomb in the room. (For those of you who don't know who I mean, watch the Tommy Lee Jones film Blown Away, and pay particular attention to the kitchen scene. What scene is that? You'll know it when you see it.)

With my Pius trilogy, I take the “machinegun through the door” a little too literal at times. The first chapter opens with a gunman picking up tech expert at Rome's airport, and leads into a body being blown out of a window and landing on their car. Then I reveal that it's the head of Papal Security picking up a Secret Service agent. When I'm not dropping bodies out of windows, everyone has just barely enough time to analyze what's going on before they're attacked again. Or they have a nice quiet conversation about their past, their feelings, their character exposition … did I write that out loud? Oh well … and then somebody is mugging them, or shooting at them, or performing strange gymnastic attacks with a halberd. 

 Yes, that last part is a long story. Read A Pius Man for that one.

With my other project, Codename: Winterborn (yes, after the Cruxshadows song), my protagonist, Lt. Kevin R. Anderson has more internal pressures driving him. At the opening of Codename: Winterborn, send Kevin and his team of spies into the Islamic Republic of France (the IRF … or the Irritating, Revolting Frogs).

Then I kill off almost everyone Kevin likes, because some politicians thought that blowing the cover on his SpecOps team would be just a great idea for political points, and their bank accounts.

Call back post -- Bad Romance: How to be a Cynical Romantic

This first aired on my blog four years ago.

It's hard to remember that I had a blog for so long.

Anyway, this kind of tells you where I am as far as personal development goes. I went from "I'm a cynical bastard" to writing romance novels. Who knew?

Anyway, the next few days should be very much like this.  I have a guest coming into New York City for the next few days, and I'm going to be playing tour guide all the way.

This one is a little strange to look at.  The profile on Manana has been modified due to image issues, and the original pic is replaced with the lovely and talented author Kia Heavey.  If you haven't read her books, I do recommend them.

Again, there will be several of these over the next few days, so yes, I'll be out and about. There will be a radio show on Sunday, and that should go up, And I may even have a music post squeezed in somewhere.  But I'll be wrapped up until around Tuesday. And, since my blog audience has more than tripled since then, this should be new to a great many people.

Be well, all.

Enjoy.

Sad Puppies Bite Back XI: Puppies with Teeth

IF YOU ARE NEW TO SPBB, CLICK THE SAD PUPPY TAB ABOVE FOR PREVIOUS EPISODES

This one is a little complicated, and will come with plenty of footnotes.

Also, this contains a few requested / suggested SWATs.

And Jim Butcher.

Also into this enters Peter Grant, of Bayou Renaissance Man, who has even had a few posts on this series.  Basically, he's a guy who even Larry Correia respects.  Grant is also leading a boycott of Tor, especially after Irene Gallo's comments a few weeks ago. He basically wants a real, public, apology from Tor.... while on the other hand, Vox Day wants Irene Gallo fired.

Anyway, once again, this is parody. I'm just making fun of a lot of the stupid. I'm not taking any of this seriously, and neither should you. If you do take this seriously, you need to lighten up. To my knowledge, none of these people mentioned in this series have even been SWATted.

Fun fact, though: I've posted a link or two at a blog that has chronicled these posts. The replies to those links have made it clear to me that some idiots have seen these blogs as death threats.  Yes, you read that right, "Sad Puppies Bite Back" is now a series of death threats, according to some of the Puppy Kickers. Even though the original premise of SWATting is about attempted assassination by SWAT team, and even though the targets are all Sad Puppies, the Puppy Kickers are the abused party. Remember that.

No wonder some people I know want to rename them the Angry Pussies.

Also, when I TWEETED that fun fact, said blog replied that I am a man of "great simplicity of mind." Having read his comments section ... seriously, buddy, don't go there. Heh.

Anyway, time to once again UNLEASH THE PUPPIES.

Peter "Renaissance Man" Grant

Dorothy "Earhart" Grant

Sigh. Seriously. This guy's about as threatening as Brad Torgersen.

And yes, she is a pilot.

[SWAT team pulls up to a house on the bayou. Peter Grant sits off to one side, painting a sunrise over the ocean. The SWAT team unloads casually.] Peter Grant?

[The painter looks up and smiles broadly] Let me guess, 911 call? Man with a gun?

[SWAT #1 nods] Yes sir. But a few guys at the station know you were a prison chaplain, so we took it with a grain of salt.

[PG] Should have taken it with tequila. Goes better with the salt. As for the call, I wondered when they would get around to me, especially after I started my Tor boycott.

[PG slowly rises from the easel, heads inside with a heavy limp] Follow me inside. Got something I want to show you fellas.

[SWAT #1 follows.  The inside of the house has a ceiling that looks like the Sistine chapel. The walls are made of marble, painted with frescoes. In the front corner of the house is a shrine.  Then there's a gun rack. PG himself is heading towards a computer station next to the guns]

[SWAT #1] Nice weapon collection.

[PG laughs] It's Tennessee. Are we allowed residence without an arsenal? 

[SWAT #1 nods] True

[PG boots up computer] Excuse the mess.

[SWAT #1 looks down.  There are neatly stacked books on the coffee table, ranging from theology and philosophy to mechanical engineering.] Not a problem.

[PG taps the computer a few times]  That's what I thought. See, you're one part of a number of SWATting incidents of authors.  I used to be in IT, and John Ringo has some fans in the NSA who keep reading his books, so he's sicced them on it, too. Give it about two or three more phone calls, and we'll have the guy.

[Sound of an engine comes in, Puddle jumper lands next to the house.  PG smiles] Could be worse, it could be Tom Knighton's tank.

[Dorothy Grant is heard outside, offering lemonade to all the SWAT guys, who politely decline. She enters the front]  Peter? We're entertaining guests?

[PG grins] We've been SWATted.

[She nods] Any idea by whom?

[PG] At a guess? The usual suspect.

[DG]  Well, just bless. His. Heart.

[Both men cringe at the most threatening insult in all of the South.  PG continues]  Apparently, there's another phone call going out from the phone. Give it another two calls, you'll have the sucker.

[SWAT #1 nods] Thank you, sir, we'll keep track, and get back to you if there is anything.

[SWAT leaves. Dorothy hugs. Peter. They watch SWAT drive off, and they wave goodbye]

[DG] Everything went well?

[PG] Yup. And if it didn't, we've got the automated turrets, just in case they came in shooting.

[DG] So, who's the next person being SWATted?

[PG shrugs]  I have no idea.  The burner phone wasn't calling 911 this time. The outgoing call was to another country.

[DG] Really? Why?

[PG] No idea. I don't even know why this guy would call Australia.

Peter Grant is also the name of Led Zeppelin's manager, so researching Mr. Grant was fun.

As for Australia....

Plots within plots: Subplotting

Ah, subplots, when you need to give your story a depth of character that it might not otherwise have. Granted, the way I look at them is probably cheating. I see character arcs and romance story threads as subplots, too. Then again, I can be a romantic sap at times. Personally, I've never had a subplot that has not impacted the main plot in some way.

If you've never read the Tom Clancy novel The Sum of all Fears, there is an entire story thread involving a sequoia being shipped from Japan to California for the construction of a Bhuddist temple. And this goes on for pages upon pages. All the while the reader is wondering “What does this tree have to do with a story about Islamic terrorists rebuilding a nuclear bomb to be used at the superbowl in order to spark World War III?”

Then the tree falls off the ship that's carrying it, and nearly hits a nuclear submarine. The sub thinks it's under attack and we're off to the races. Growing up, when multiple plot threads collided, my family called it “The tree hitting the sub.”

If you want a subplot that has little or nothing to do with the main one, I will point you to the David Weber novel Honor Among Enemies. The premise is simple: the heroine, Honor Harrington, is politically inconvenient, and she's packed off with several ships, mostly loaded with the scum of the fleet. One subplot involves how one of the honest, forthright crewman has to be trained to fight back against the dregs of the fleet. It's fun, satisfying, and while it doesn't really impact the main plot, it does show the reader the ramifications of the main plot on people other than our primary cast.

In my own work, I may be too single-minded to do anything but have subplots that tie into the main. For A Pius Man, I even had the love story feed into the main story. That one was so integral, if it had failed, so would the rest of the story. 

But, then again, if Terry Goodkind could have true love save the world in his book series, then why couldn't I?

Though, come to think of it, there is at least one book I've done that did not technically need a subplot. The book was A Pius Legacy. In it, the UN had declared the Pope a war criminal – very long story. The subplot revolved around a hapless writer and historian brought in in order to be counter-spin to the enemy. Then the enemy decides to shoot back with real bullets. Was it needed? Maybe not. It didn't add a whole heck of a lot to the plot, but it added a lot to the story.

After all, in a war of politics, it doesn't exactly help if one side isn't actively dueling with the enemy. As much as I like to joke that my Pius books consist of nonfiction slipped in between gun battles, it can't all be about shooting bad guys to pieces. Damnit.

Heck, by the end of the series, the amount of politics that crept into the war that develops needed a subplot all by itself. It had to be there in order to explain a war between the head of the CIA and President “Barry,” and why a lot of countries don't act the way sane people would expect them to. 

However, that subplot was more like a sneaky Clancy subplot, and at the end of the novel, the geopolitics involved wound up impacting the main plot like a truck t-boning a volvo.

In all of these case, these subplots were planned. They were reasoned out, outlined, thought through, and I knew exactly what I was doing...

Adjusted for value of "I know what I'm doing."

In Codename: Winterborn, my hero, Kevin Anderson, is being hunted by a guild of mercenaries – imagine an umbrella organization for private military contractors. Some of these mercenaries are good soldiers who want a paycheck. Some are patriots who want access to good technology, and can serve their country better in the private sector. And some are plain old sociopaths who want to be paid to indulge in their hobbies of mass slaughter. 

While Kevin goes through his own personal checklist of politicians who won't be missed, he gains the respect of some mercenaries, pitting some of his hunters against other members of the guild. The internal conflict of the Mercenaries' Guild gains Kevin some strange allies that keep him alive at some interesting moments. I hadn't planned it, I hadn't considered it, it just sort of happened.

Yes, sometimes a subplot is just what happens when your world decides that it has something to add to your novel.

Listening to your characters: Dialogue

Dialogue is, honestly, one of the hardest parts of writing a novel. I don't mean remembering to label who is saying what (though would it kill some authors to put in dialogue ID tags every four lines?), I mean something far more difficult. You have to make certain that your characters all sound different and distinct from each other. This can be hard if you haven't got a good set of characters.

Like most authors, I hear voices in my head. Sometimes, if I focus, it's literal. I can hear their voices, their complaints, their accents, their emphasis on things. Sometimes I cheat and push through the dialogue, knowing what they're going to say, and how they'd phrase it, but sometimes I miss part of the music.

One of the most important parts of dialogue is making sure you get the music and the lyrics down. Sure, word choice in important, but is also has to match the cadence. This will go a long way to making sure that your Californian mercenary sounds different from your New York Catholic priest. I'm a New Yorker. Like with Henry Higgins, I can pin most people to within at least a general neighborhood, just by the way they speak. But, again, you do have to listen.

Pacing, thrillers, and setting things on fire

[If you've seen this before, well, don't be surprised. I have jury duty today, so my time's a little backed up. Sorry for the rerun, folks.]

The Mad Genius Club is going to force me to actually work. I don't mean they're holding a gun to my head, but they are making me up my game with their most recent posting of their year's topics.

If they're going to up their game, let's see who can out-blog who. Ha!

… Which, sadly, makes me think “Who ha's? Didn't Sarah Hoyt talk about this once?”

If you'd been to Cedar's blog last week, you've already read this one. If you haven't ... why haven't you?

Anyway...

If you're interested in pacing an entire series, you could do much worse than look at the fantasy novels of Terry Goodkind. In his case, the solution to one, world-ending doom leads to the next world ending doom. I did that in one series, the Pius trilogy, where book one ends nice and happy and yay the bad guys are gone … then that lead into book two, where the bad guys had a backup plan, which led into causing problems in what would be book three.

But for pacing an individual novel, the short version is, I like putting pressure on my characters. I have to, otherwise I don't get the best out of them. After all, these are thrillers. Even when I'm going through character moments, the moments have to keep the tension on – on the protagonist or on the reader. It is perfectly and completely fair to have a long conversation about love and emotions, and politics and economics. It can go on for as long as you like … though the reader might find it more interesting if there's a bomb in the room. (For those of you who don't know who I mean, watch the Tommy Lee Jones film Blown Away, and pay particular attention to the kitchen scene. What scene is that? You'll know it when you see it.)

With my Pius trilogy, I take the “machinegun through the door” a little too literal at times. The first chapter opens with a gunman picking up tech expert at Rome's airport, and leads into a body being blown out of a window and landing on their car. Then I reveal that it's the head of Papal Security picking up a Secret Service agent. When I'm not dropping bodies out of windows, everyone has just barely enough time to analyze what's going on before they're attacked again. Or they have a nice quiet conversation about their past, their feelings, their character exposition … did I write that out loud? Oh well … and then somebody is mugging them, or shooting at them, or performing strange gymnastic attacks with a halberd. 

 Yes, that last part is a long story. Read A Pius Man for that one.

With my other project, Codename: Winterborn (yes, after the Cruxshadows song), my protagonist, Lt. Kevin R. Anderson has more internal pressures driving him. At the opening of Codename: Winterborn, send Kevin and his team of spies into the Islamic Republic of France (the IRF … or the Irritating, Revolting Frogs).

Then I kill off almost everyone Kevin likes, because some politicians thought that blowing the cover on his SpecOps team would be just a great idea for political points, and their bank accounts.

Except, before he was a spy, Kevin was a Navy SEAL.

So, I get to send Kevin on a fun-filled ride of assassinating fourteen politicians. Yay!

Is that enough for even internal pressure on your protagonist? No. Sorry. If he takes his time, Kevin could spent the next year killing all of them. Revenge-fueled rage only carries someone for so long before he stops, slows down, thinks, and takes his time. Hmm...

Oh, wait. Duh! The IRF mission was to take out a nuclear arsenal. With one team gone, another will have to be sent. So, Kevin has to kill all of these little bastards (the politicians) before even more Americans are murdered. That'll throw him into a pressure cooker. Muahahahaha.

Hmm. Yes, that's nice and all, but after a while, someone's going to catch on and try shooting back at Kevin. In my world of 2093, it's three years after a small nuclear war (only 2.2 billion dead). There aren't quite as many senators as their used to be, mostly because there are a few states that are radioactive wasteland. When wiping out 20% of the senate, SOMEBODY'S bound to notice.

 Thankfully, there's a whole Guild of Mercenaries ready to step up – imagine an umbrella organization for every Private Military Contractor out there. Some are good folks just earning a paycheck, some are folks thrown out of other countries because they were too freaking scary to live there.